Word: jeffersonism
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...contempt for electioneering and popular politics. They rejected blood and family as sources of status, however, and were eager to establish themselves by principles that could be acquired through learning and education. They struggled to internalize the new, Enlightened Man--made standards that had come to define what Jefferson called the "natural aristocracy"--politeness, sociability, compassion, virtue, disinterestedness and an aversion to corruption and courtlike behavior...
...only other religious reference in the Declaration comes in the last sentence, which notes the signers' "firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence." Most of the founders subscribed to the concept of Providence, but they interpreted it in different ways. Jefferson believed in a rather nebulous sense of "general Providence," the principle that the Creator has a benevolent interest in mankind. Others, most notably those who followed in the Puritan footsteps of Cotton Mather, had faith in a more specific doctrine, sometimes called "special Providence," which held that God has a direct involvement in human lives and intervenes based...
...these 18th century heroes, Jefferson has been the most important. No one has been more identified with our democratic heritage. Even into our own time, politicians want to get right with the third President. William Jefferson Clinton began his Administration by invoking the memory of Jefferson in his Inaugural Address. Ronald Reagan repeatedly called on Jefferson in order to justify his attempts to reduce the size of the Federal Government, urging us all to "pluck a flower from Thomas Jefferson's life and wear it in our soul forever...
Like the other revolutionaries, Jefferson was eager to prove himself by the latest, most enlightened values. His father Peter Jefferson was a wealthy Virginia planter and surveyor. But his father was not a refined and liberally educated gentleman. He did not read Latin, he did not know French, he did not play the violin, and as far as we know, he never once questioned the idea of a religious establishment or the owning of slaves. Jefferson aimed to be very different from his father. No founder worked harder at being civilized. Even by 1782, as an admiring French visitor observed...
...time, this cultivated natural aristocrat became the founder most trusting of ordinary people. All human beings, he said, rich and poor, white and black, had "implanted in [their] breasts" a "moral instinct" and a sympathetic "love of others." "State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor," said Jefferson; the ploughman will decide it as well, and often better, "because he has not been led astray by artificial rules." This idea lay behind Jefferson's belief in the natural harmony of society and his advocacy of minimal government. Government, especially monarchical government, was the source of evil in society...